Signs of life

Jeb Bush shows signs of life in New Hampshire

‘This is far from over up here,’ a state GOP operative says.

By Eli Stokols

No candidate can be happier to say goodbye to 2015 than Jeb Bush, whose months of futility in the face of Donald Trump’s attacks relegated him to an afterthought in a wild and unpredictable Republican primary. And yet, at year’s end, there are signs that people in New Hampshire, the state that could key an unlikely comeback, still take him seriously.

Take the 200-person crowds showing up at his four Saturday town halls. Take the current polls in New Hampshire that put him within striking distance of every GOP rival but Trump.

And perhaps most significantly, take Beverly Bruce, a Republican activist who served as Mitt Romney’s 2012 New Hampshire finance chair and had been courted by several contenders. She has decided to throw her weight, and her considerable organizing muscle, behind Bush after attending three of his four voter meetings on Saturday.

“He just hit every one of my buttons,” said Bruce. “Everywhere he goes, people walk in and they say, ‘Well, I don’t know, he hasn’t done that well.’ And when they walk out, they love him. I saw it happen again and again. I'm going to do everything I can to help him.”

Bruce had intended to announce her support after the holidays. But when she whispered her decision to Bush on Saturday night, he was so excited that he blurted it out to everyone within earshot.

That enthusiasm about winning over Bruce is understandable, given the past several months in which his campaign, built for a fundraising juggernaut and expected front-runner, became little more than a punch line to a joke about a candidate who just didn’t sell, no matter if he packaged himself as a “joyful tortoise,” or “the disrupter” or a guy who could “fix it.”

When Bush came to New Hampshire two months ago, after another weak debate performance, this time thanks to smackdown delivered by Marco Rubio, his campaign’s “Jeb Can Fix It” signs seemed laden with subtext, encapsulating a campaign out of touch with political reality: Jeb wasn’t fixing anything, just making it worse. The incremental uptick in his favorable rating among New Hampshire voters as a result of his super PAC’s first month of TV ads had, his backers would soon find out, been stopped in its tracks after the debate debacle. The reporters he was suddenly welcoming onto his campaign bus characterized the on-the-record sessions, and the bus tour itself, as a “therapy session” for the sputtering candidate. For the first time, there were whispers he might drop out.

With no other choice really, Bush has pressed ahead, insisting he will prevail in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary. In November, he hired a speaking coach and loosened up — a little. Still awkward with the performance art of politics and burdened by his family’s political baggage, Bush has embraced his inner wonk. But he can still be tin-eared to the irony he often evokes. On Saturday, at one of his four New Hampshire town halls, he hit his standard line that Trump “cannot insult [his] way to the presidency.” Moments later, Bush called Trump “a jerk.”

Still, the more authentic approach better aligns with this unconventional election cycle. Bush, of course, has hung on. And now in the final days of 2015, he appears to have cycled through the various stages of grief, from the summer’s denial of Trump upending his imagined “shock and awe” campaign, to the anger and depression of autumn and, just in time for the final sprint toward the first contests on the primary calendar, an apparent upward turn toward hope.

"He's had plenty of opposition from all sides, but he's kept his course and that's what I respect him for," said George Roberts Jr., a former New Hampshire statehouse speaker who, after months of being undecided, showed up at Bush's town hall meeting Monday night in Alton and wrote his campaign a $1,000 check. "He's a real candidate that people respect, not a schoolyard bully without concrete plans."

That "bully" Roberts referenced, Trump, sits high above the GOP field at 28 percent in the current RealClearPolitics average of New Hampshire polls. Clustered behind him are five candidates at 12 to 8 percent: Rubio and Ted Cruz, on the uptick as a result of their dominance nationally, and Chris Christie, Bush and John Kasich, all of whom are running a more traditional retail-heavy New Hampshire campaign to win over voters known for demanding more than hollow promises and platitudes.

“What I notice at the town hall meetings is voters have gotten past the introductory phase and are drilling in with more detailed questions,” said Steve Duprey, the RNC committeeman here who is staying neutral in the primary. “You can’t get through New Hampshire on generalities, particularly on foreign policy and defense because we have such a high percentage of retired military.”

The race, especially in New Hampshire, lacks a true front-runner, due largely to questions about whether Trump supporters will actually participate in the Feb. 9 primary. Marco Rubio and Cruz, who have moved into the top tier of the race with Trump, have spent less time than all their rivals in a state that has long rewarded candidates who invest in retail politics

Given Bush’s investments in organization, advertising and time on the ground with voters, it’s suddenly possible to take his insistence to voters Saturday that they’re “looking at the Republican nominee” a bit more seriously.

To Tom Rath, a veteran GOP operative in New Hampshire who is supporting Kasich, Trump’s lead is misleading, especially with the primary still 50 days away in a state in which a third to half of the voters tend to decide in the final week.

“A front-runner at 26 percent eight weeks out isn’t a fron-trunner,” he said. “That’s elastic. He better not go to sleep thinking that’s a lead. These polls right now are still like batting averages in spring training. It’s just too early to read someone in or out of the race.”

More than any other candidate at the moment, Bush is fixated on the poll leader, positioning himself as the anti-Trump following his feistier debate performance last week. Just Monday, Bush’s campaign released a video of debate highlights bragging that he is "the only one" willing to take on Trump and mocking Rubio, Christie and Cruz for their deference to him.

But, five months after Trump began to badger Bush, witheringly and lastingly defining him as “low energy,” it’s unclear if the former governor is capable of returning the favor. Even if Bush has finally homed in on a more effective response to Trump, it could be too late.

But in New Hampshire, Bush’s ticket to fight on in South Carolina and beyond doesn’t depend so much on vanquishing Trump as on beating the other contenders in the crowded establishment lane.

“For all the stories about everything he’s gone through, he’s right there with Rubio,” said one Bush supporter in New Hampshire, who spoke privately about how the candidate’s team in the state views the race. “If Christie and Rubio aren’t able to break away from the pack, I think Bush has a fighting chance.

“Trump may win New Hampshire, but for Bush, Christie and Rubio, it’s about where they are relative to other establishment contenders. If Bush finishes second behind Rubio or Christie, that’s bad. But if he can win the primary among everyone other than Trump, he fights on.”

That explains Bush’s sudden focus on New Hampshire, where he is planning to spend at least half of his time over the next seven weeks. He held four town halls Saturday (a fifth was canceled out of respect to a military funeral) and another Monday evening — and has two more Tuesday in the state’s north country before a return trip after Christmas.

“Where Bush has been weak in national media interviews and debates, he’s really strong in these town hall meetings,” the Bush supporter said. “For a guy who is clearly of the political aristocracy, he comes across as authentic and genuine in these smaller settings.”

But Bush isn’t the only candidate about to zero in on New Hampshire. Rubio, Christie and Kasich were all in New Hampshire campaigning Monday and Rubio is staying through Wednesday.

Rubio, the best communicator in the field, has risen on the strength of five strong debate performances; although questions persist about which early state he can actually win. Christie, who has focused almost all of his energy in New Hampshire, has risen in the polls here on the strength of endorsements. And Kasich, who made a strong first impression last summer on the back of an early run of TV ads, plans to be on the airwaves again in early January.

“It’s going to be a battle up here because it’s still so wide open and there is such a thin margin between finishing second and moving on and finishing fourth and being done,” said Rath. Bush, in the average of polls, now sits in fifth place. But Bruce believes voters are still open to him, and that he can close the sale.

“I was wearing my new Jeb sticker in a restaurant the other night and the waiter, a 25-year-old kid, asks me about him,” Bruce said. “He said, ‘You know, I really like Jeb. When he speaks, he’s the only one who makes me feel safe about living in this country.’

“That told me that this is far from over up here.”